I was on a podcast once, being interviewed about my life and my work. During the conversation, I shared my experience of being groomed and trafficked when I was twelve years old.
The host, steeped in the modern spiritual paradigm, looked at me and asked, “Well, what were the red flags? How did you not know?”
I stared at her. “What do you mean, how did I not know? I was twelve. I didn’t know about grooming.”
She pressed on. “But how did you miss it? I had an older man try to date me once, and I just knew. How did you not see the flags?”
I had to explain it to her three times: That is how grooming works. You don’t see the red flags. That is the entire psychological mechanism of the abuse.
The Limits of “Creating Your Reality”
This interaction perfectly encapsulates the darkest, most toxic edge of mainstream consciousness work.
There is a deeply held belief in these circles that we are the absolute creators of our reality. As a high-level concept, it can be a useful model for taking ownership of your responses and your future. But when it is applied universally, without nuance, context, or basic human compassion, it becomes a weapon of victim-blaming.
If I am the creator of everything in my reality, then technically, yes, I created the bad things that happened to me. But if we follow that logic to its extreme, I also created the bad things happening to other people.
Applying “you create your reality” to a twelve-year-old trafficking victim is not spirituality. It is moral bankruptcy.
The Arrogance of the Unharmed
When someone asks a victim, “How did you not know?” they are not actually seeking information. They are seeking to protect themselves.
They are using their spiritual framework as a shield. If they can convince themselves that you missed the red flags because you weren’t aligned or aware enough, then they can believe that it will never happen to them. It is a defense mechanism born of terror.
But it requires them to deny the reality of predatory behavior. Predators do not show up waving red flags. They show up offering exactly what a vulnerable person needs—attention, safety, validation—until the trap is shut.
The Necessity of Moral Boundaries
We have to stop collapsing the boundaries around what is morally contestable.
Severe interpersonal harm—abuse, assault, trafficking—is not just “material to be cognitively transformed.” It is a violation. It must first be honored as a violation before any healing or meaning-making can occur.
If your spiritual framework cannot hold the reality of evil, or the existence of genuine victims, then your framework is too small for the real world.
How to Hold Space for Trauma
If you are a coach, a healer, or a friend, you must learn to sit with the discomfort of senseless harm without rushing to reframe it.
When someone shares a story of abuse, do not ask them what their lesson was. Do not ask them how they attracted it. Do not ask them why they didn’t leave sooner.
Honor the Reality of the Violation
Listen. Validate the pain. Acknowledge that what happened to them was wrong, and that it was not their fault. True consciousness integration doesn’t require us to pretend the darkness doesn’t exist; it requires us to bring the light of compassion directly into it.
